316. Why Being Too Tired Is Exactly Why You Need Support

You tell yourself you're too busy and too tired to focus on yourself. You'll do it when things calm down, when work eases up, when the kids need less, when you finally get a good night's sleep. But food still calls your name at all the wrong times. You've tried to fix it, but the cycle keeps repeating.

You're not lazy. You're not broken. You're trying to solve exhaustion without understanding where it actually comes from.

In this episode of Insatiable, I break down why "too busy and too tired" is often protective resistance in disguise and why waiting for life to calm down costs you more than you think. I walk through how midlife physiology, perfectionism, lack of agency, and how we're conditioned as women all fuel the tired trigger. Plus, why turning to food makes complete sense as a solution, not a character flaw.

1:48 - Why “too busy and too tired” can be protective resistance disguised as practicality

4:48 – Example of how investing in your health earlier creates dividends you can’t see until later

6:33 - Biological shifts in midlife that quietly change hunger, satiety, and energy

9:16 - How perfectionism and over-functioning impact your energy

9:50 - Why sugar and “I deserve this” thinking are solutions before they’re problems

12:03 - Example of the surprising role of agency in chronic exhaustion

15:25 – How investing in the right support for yourself and self-compassion can energize you

19:25 - Final takeaways for this episode and an invitation to you

Mentioned In Why Being Too Tired Is Exactly Why You Need Support

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FREE Workshop on February 10th - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track

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Chapters

• 1:48 Why “too busy and too tired” can be protective resistance disguised as practicality
• 4:48 Example of how investing in your health earlier creates dividends you can’t see until later
• 6:33 Biological shifts in midlife that quietly change hunger, satiety, and energy
• 9:16 How perfectionism and over-functioning impact your energy
• 9:50 Why sugar and “I deserve this” thinking are solutions before they’re problems
• 12:03 Example of the surprising role of agency in chronic exhaustion
• 15:25 How investing in the right support for yourself and self-compassion can energize you
• 19:25 Final takeaways for this episode and an invitation to you

Transcript

Welcome to Insatiable, the podcast where we discuss the intersection of food, psychology, and culture.

Because of menopause and the hormonal changes, satiety decreases as we age. And it decreases with sleep issues as well. So satiety is a fancy word for when I eat food, how full do I feel afterwards? So when we are not sleeping well, and as our estrogen and progesterone and testosterone change, we do not feel as satisfied from our food.

I’m your host, Ali Shapiro, an integrated health coach, 32-year and counting cancer survivor, and have radically healed my relationship with food and my body. For the past 17 years, I’ve been working with clients individually, in group programs, and in company settings to do the same. Welcome.

The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.

So today I want to address one of the main reasons people count themselves out of getting the very support they need. A big one is, “I’m too busy and tired.” Trust me, I understand this personally because this is a vicious cycle, especially when it comes to battling food. Being tired and busy isn’t just an objection to getting support. It’s also one of the main eating triggers.

Now, in my upcoming workshop, where the details are in the show notes, I’ll share all four of my TAIL triggers, but tired is the T in TAIL. Okay? So if you’re telling yourself you’re too busy and exhausted to invest in this deeper work that we do in Truce With Food Consistency, that exhaustion is exactly why you need it. The obstacle is the path. The obstacle is the way.

We all think there’s going to be a magical time when there’s an opening. It’s like the same “diet starts tomorrow” fantasy thinking, or “and then,” or “once I,” right? So I want to really dissect that today because we don’t want to just take that at face value. We want to understand what’s going on under the surface.

So why do we hold off in investing in support? Okay. First, I want to say when to invest in support for our health goals is a loaded topic. This is not black and white. It’s never just an, “Oh my God, you’re just making excuses,” or “you have all this.” “We have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyoncé.” No, we don’t. Beyoncé probably has a staff. So I’m not one of those people.

So there are times when you feel like generally you don’t have the resources. The time, the energy, the capacity, or the money. I’m saying that is true. And often we can tell ourselves that we don’t have the time or that we’re exhausted because part of the universal human condition is to be both excited and afraid of change. So there’s a lot of protective resistance that comes up when deciding to invest in ourselves.

This is especially true for women who think they can only invest in themselves if their health is on fire. Once you get the scary diagnosis or you’re at your highest weight ever. We think if things are fine, it can feel selfish, high maintenance, or my personal default is, “I can just figure this out myself,” right? I’m going to exhaust a little bit of resources I have to figure it out myself.

I really think that this is part of the internalized cultural conditioning that doesn’t value women’s time or energy. We know our pay is less. We know that we have terms like stay-at-home mom, whereas mothering is so energy-intensive. Caregiving in general does not get paid as much. And women do the majority of caregiving.

Then we internalize this as well, not valuing our time, energy, and getting the support that would actually save us in the long run.

Now, this is why I want to bring this up because waiting costs us when it comes to our health and aging especially. So this is a very uncomfortable truth. This is not a morality issue about who’s better or worse. This is biology. The longer you wait to invest in the support for your health, the more it costs you.

Health is one of those things that the earlier you invest, the more those investments pay dividends. I hate using financial examples related to health, but it’s like compound interest. It’s true. If you really invest early on, it pays so many dividends.

So I’m going to give you a concrete example. I just got an Oura Ring. I’m working on some stuff with my sleep, which I’ll probably talk about in a future episode. But after a couple of weeks of data, my Oura Ring says my heart health is 11 years younger than my age. Okay. Now, I don’t know if that’s completely accurate. We have to take all data with a grain of salt.

This really matters to me because there’s just a big question mark of what did chemo and radiation do to my heart? So it’s something that weighs on me, and it’s something I’m really tracking for myself. But this measurement would make sense because for almost 20 years now, I’ve done the foundations I can control. I’ve moved my body. I eat well. I work on my sleep, even with all my sleep challenges. I’ve still been doing sleep pretty well for 14 of those 20 years. I love how I spend my time. And now the last several years, I’ve been prioritizing relationships.

Now, if my Oura Ring said my cardiac health was 11 years older, that would take so much more effort at 47 to reverse that than when I was 27.

Now, look, I know how all-or-nothing perfectionist thinking is. It’s like, “Oh, if I’m not being perfect, there can be catastrophe thinking.” No, you can always make changes and improve our health, always. It’s never too late to get started. And you get more bang for your buck and quality of life the sooner you invest in your health.

So let’s get back to this tired trigger. I really want to dissect that. So as you know, I am always like, “Why does turning to food with these TAIL triggers make sense?” With the tired trigger, we turn to food for several phenomenal reasons.

So let’s first, you know, I work mainly with people 35 and over. Entering our second half of life, on that perimenopause to menopause spectrum. So there is perimenopause and menopause sleep issues. For sure. But also because of menopause and the hormonal changes, satiety decreases as we age. And it decreases with sleep issues as well.

So satiety is a fancy word for when I eat food, how full do I feel afterwards? So when we are not sleeping well, and as our estrogen and progesterone and testosterone change, we do not feel as satisfied from our food.

This is how GLP-1s work. There’s a lot of mystery to them, but what we ultimately know is they’re making people feel more satisfied from what they eat.

So satiety decreases as we age. And the satiety, which comes from being more insulin sensitive, less insulin resistant the younger we are. But that insulin sensitivity helps you metabolize food. Food is energy. I think we forget this when we’re only taught to think about calories. We know calories are a certain source of energy, but I’m talking about like how much energy do you think you have?

The energy process as we age is less efficient, and that efficiency will vary based on how well we eat consistently or not.

So when we are tired, we turn to food to help us power through, to be more productive. At work, that 3 p.m. slump, “I gotta get these last two things off my to-do list.” Or if you’re in a caregiving role, it’s like, “Oh, I’m done with my day job, and now I gotta do the second shift,” right?

Or if you are a consistent caregiver, as I’ve seen with the people in my life, there’s always this uncertainty that takes up a lot of energy that you have to manage. Whether it’s with kids or our elders with chronic disease issues.

So there are real physiological shifts as to why we’re more tired. And I glossed over the sleep one, but obviously if we don’t sleep as well, without getting too much into a rabbit hole, the hormones that make us feel more satiated and less hungry, ghrelin and leptin, they go in the opposite directions we want them to. So there are real physiological constraints that we have as we age.

Then there are three emotional things that make us more tired. So if you identify as a perfectionist or even just an overachiever, mentally, we build things up. My clients come to me like, “I’m building things up,” right? And they often feel so big and so often, especially if they’re procrastinating eating, they need extra energy to do the perfectionist thing, to do the exceptional thing, to over-function. To give that Herculean effort. So that requires extra energy.

Fourth, and I alluded to this earlier with the exhaustion, foods like sugar especially help us power through to keep being productive or even going if we’re exhausted. So here, sugar’s the solution. It’s not the problem to marking all those things off your to-do list.

And then last, and this is a sneaky one, and we’re going to get a little bit more into this in a second. Clients often turn to food when they’re saying, “I deserve this after a long, hard day,” okay? They’re exhausted from especially going, going, going, or over-functioning.

What does that look like? They’re rushing through everything so nothing is enjoyable. It’s not sustainable to not be somewhat fulfilled during the day. I am not saying everything on your to-do list has to be something that you get to do and want to do. There is going to be discomfort in life, but not giving yourself any emotional enjoyment, it’s like when you ignore your hunger all day and then you’re famished at night. The same goes with emotional fulfillment. So essentially, food is the solution to having too much of what we don’t want on our plates, to give us “I deserve this,” to give me a lift. That’s an energetic lift.

So food is really always revealing our deeper patterns if we know how to see them. So these last three reasons that I said make perfect, beautiful sense why we turn to food are really about being beyond sleep.

So when most people come into Truce With Food Consistency, they think the only way to fix their tired trigger is to get more sleep. Look, if you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you know I’ve been struggling with sleep for six years on and off. It’s been getting better through the years. Sleep helps a lot.

And, this is about being able to hold more than something being one thing, exhaustion comes from lots of other places too. Not moving your body in ways that are nourishing or seeing exercise as punishment. You know I’m obsessed with my walks if you’ve been listening to this for a while or you’re a client in my program. Walks give us so much energy, especially those days we don’t get a lot of sleep.

A big one that people were so surprised about in the last Truce With Food Consistency round: lack of agency. Feeling like you’re not choosing what’s on your plate, your metaphorical plate, that is exhausting.

I’ll give you an example. Today, Eça is home from school. He’s just coming off of two weeks of winter break. Last week, he had a snow day. He has another snow day. I love my kid. It is so hard to be able to work and watch him on these days. And so I have a real lack of agency over what I’m doing on these days as much as I’d want to. It’s exhausting.

But that’s one example. I can buffer that because most of my life is what I get to do. But so many of us, there’s just not a lot of what we get to do on our plates. Or it’s not only lack of agency, it could just be having more on your plate that you have to do than you want to do.

So really having energy and time isn’t just about sleep or waiting for more time. It’s about being more intentional with the time you do have. So yes, you have to prioritize sleep, but also you have to see how you override the agency you do have so that your days are more energizing.

Okay. I mean, even multitasking. As I know so many clients have said, once they hit menopause, they can’t multitask anymore. Neither can I. It’s like, “Oh my God, if I can just experiment with focusing on one thing,” it’s incredible how fast and creative the whole thing unfolds. So it’s not necessarily what we’re doing, but how we’re approaching our lives sometimes.

This also includes getting support. This is one thing I’ve learned these past few years, particularly around getting support for my sleep issues and my business. It is so energizing to get support from people who you know are great at what they do. And then you’re also in it with other people. It’s so much more fun and effective.

I can personally say to this, especially around my business goals, I stifled my own growth for so long because I was trying to do everything myself. That was really foolish. I’m so glad I’ve really worked beyond that. It doesn’t mean it’s always such an easy yes, but I have so much more discernment around when it really makes sense.

If we’re honest, investing in our goals is scary. We’re betting on ourselves when we invest in our goals. I know for me, I had to get to the point where I was just tired of being tired. And maybe that’s really the place we have to get to 90% of the time. So if you’re really exhausted, this is especially for you.

Anyhow, so we have to see tiredness and busyness beyond getting more sleep and more time. We have to have flexible thinking with this. “What are my options in the gray zone beyond just more sleep and naps?” All right?

And this is what I teach in Truce With Food Consistency. Because food is so much more about getting our needs met. When we fall off track, we have to see flexibility in how we get our needs met. So that’s why I teach it. There are so many more options we have, but we can’t really see that when we’re in all-or-nothing thinking.

So many clients are like, “I know I built things up.” Then as they go through the framework in Truce With Food Consistency, they’re like, “I didn’t even realize I was building up so much more,” right? It’s like, “Oh my God.”

So what opens up after you start to really invest in yourself with the right support and start to see tiredness beyond just more time and more sleep? So often after clients start the Truce With Food work, and the beginning step there is my Truce With Food Consistency program, which is open here in February, many remark they wish they’d found me so much earlier.

There are a few reasons for this. Once they go through Truce With Food Consistency, they realize that they weren’t broken, but their approach was. When you understand why turning to food makes sense, all the judgment and noise that exhausts you, all that beating yourself up that comes from thinking you’re broken starts to fade.

So that is energizing. It’s hopeful. It’s inspiring. So lots of space and compassion flood in. We know sustainable change can only come from a place of genuine kindness and support for ourselves, not out of guilt, shame, and fear.

I know if you're like me, 20 years ago, not a lot of people were talking about compassion. To me, I thought compassion was resignation. “Oh, I just have to be kind to myself.” But being kind to yourself doesn’t mean you just allow yourself to do whatever it is. It means you can look at yourself from a place of wholeness, understanding you’re doing the best you can with the information that you have.

Then you can see your behaviors and say, “What could I be doing differently?” That’s what I mean by kindness and support.

So again, that’s very energizing when you realize, “Oh my God, I am not weak. I don’t suck. I’m just doing the best I can. And now I know how to do better.” That brings in so much energy.

Once you have the clarity of why you’re turning to food makes complete, beautiful sense, which is the root issue, you can now get to work on the important work that moves the needle on your goals. So you’re not wasting time and energy trying to fix yourself and trying to follow another protocol that doesn’t meet you where you are in your life.

Rather, you realize the work is to learn how to better support yourself, how to relate to yourself differently around your food triggers, and then meeting those emotional needs of those triggers. So this is actually the opposite of deprivation.

So some of my clients say, “Oh my God, I just want more of this,” right? More of getting my needs met. Even though the hard part is accepting that you have needs and that you’re human and that you have to get those needs met. Once you realize how good that feels, it’s like, “I waited this long for this kind of relief,” right?

And then this is my favorite part, the whole new sides of themselves that they really like are revealed to them. Like I said just up above here, most of my clients come in begrudging they have needs, let alone that these needs involve other people. We always joke someone’s brave enough to say in the group at first, “I hate that this involves other people,” right?

We are reluctant joiners, my people, into groups, let alone asking other people for help. Yet when they start to see how meeting their needs brings them closer to the people and experience is met for them, they start enjoying their lives so much more.

Part of the all-or-nothing thinking that we really help you break free from in Truce With Food Consistency, one of the subsets of that is either/or. So it’s, “Oh, if I’m taking time for myself or I’m getting my needs met, I’m taking from other people. It’s going to cost me.” You start to see that just isn’t true. That’s part of the zero-sum thinking that we’re conditioned into, definitely in America.

So let’s bring this all together. So here’s what I want you to take away from today. If you’re telling yourself you’re too tired and too busy to invest in support, I get it. I really do. That tiredness, that’s just not an obstacle to the work. It is the work.

Because here’s the thing. Tiredness isn’t only about sleep. It’s about how much of your day feels like yours. It’s about having more on your plate that you have to do than you want to do. It’s about overriding your own agency that you probably don’t even know you have right now, but it’s happening whether you address it or not. You’re overriding it over and over until you’re running on empty.

Then food shows up. And food is so easy to access. It’s so instant. It almost works for our needs. So that’s why we can keep doing it for years, decades. I mean, I did it for decades.

But I want you to know it doesn’t mean you’re broken. Food is just the messenger. It’s actually showing you where you need more support.

So the way out isn’t waiting until things calm down. If you can’t tell, for the next couple of decades, we’re going to be in a time of rapid change. So if you’re waiting for, “Once this happens, once life calms down,” I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. Especially if you’re in your forties, fifties, and sixties. There’s actually more demands on your time for quite some time. Ask me how I know. They won’t.

The only way out is through. And it’s learning to see your patterns, meet your own needs. Yes, sometimes that involves other people. I know I hated it too at first until I realized that with the right support, it’s so much more fun and fulfilling, and it’s actually where the magic is.

So here’s my invitation to you. Here’s something really important to think about. If, like me, you thought something was going to magically change to make it feel 100% safe to invest in your goals, there are of course times when there isn’t time or energy to invest in ourselves. Again, I do not believe we all have the same 24 hours a day. I don’t think we should always be working on ourselves. That’s not it at all.

We also have to have the discernment to find out if we’re being honest with ourselves, if we have the self-awareness of when this is just protective resistance to change because it’s just scary and exciting to want to change. This is the type of self-awareness that is critical to having a truce with food.

The tired trigger is just one of four triggers of why we turn to food and stay stuck with our goals. Beyond the tired trigger, there are three other triggers we’re going to go over in detail in my free workshop. Again, those details are in the show notes. It’s coming up here very soon.

Also in this workshop, I’m going to take you through a coaching exercise so you know your exact trigger that makes you turn to food when you don’t want to be. If you are thinking, “I probably have more than one trigger,” which most people do, I will help you work through that in the workshop.

And again, to sign up for that workshop, the details are in the show notes. We always have a lot of people from the podcast who show up, which I love because it means that you all love these deeper conversations and understand really what we’re going to do. So digest this, metabolize it, and I hope to see many of you at the upcoming workshop.